The $25-an-Hour Minimum Wage!

Leave a CommentThe $25-an-Hour Minimum Wage!Commentary, Politics

Because Nothing Says “Help the Working Man” Like Pricing Him Out of a Job

Democrats are at it again, floating the bright idea of jacking the federal minimum wage up to $25 an hour. The latest proposal would phase it in over years—quicker for big outfits, slower for smaller ones—while doing away with the tipped wage for servers and the like.

It’s sold as the cure for everything ailing the little guy. In the grand tradition of government fixes, this one promises prosperity through coercion. Raise the price of labor by more than tripling it from the long-standing federal floor, and watch the good times roll. Or, as experience and basic economics suggest, watch a lot of folks get shown the door.

The Arithmetic of Good Intentions

The federal minimum wage has sat unchanged for years now, the longest stretch without a hike in the law’s history. States have filled the gap unevenly, with some pushing well above it, including experiments in places like Seattle that ramped up toward fifteen dollars and beyond.

A twenty-five-dollar mandate is no modest tweak. It’s a sledgehammer to the low end of the wage scale. Businesses facing that tab will adjust on multiple margins: fewer hires, reduced hours, higher prices, more automation, or simply closing up shop if the numbers don’t add. Past looks at smaller hikes have projected hundreds of thousands to over a million jobs lost nationally, with gains for some workers offset by losses for others, including reduced family income in net for some households. Scaling that up sharpens the math. Low-wage workers aren’t widgets; when their cost exceeds the value they produce for many entry-level roles, demand for their labor falls.

Who Gets Hurt First

Entry-level jobs, teens, part-timers, and those with fewer skills take the brunt. Studies of past increases, including phased rollouts in high-cost cities, showed hours worked in low-wage jobs dropping notably while wages rose modestly for those who kept hours—sometimes with net payroll falling for the group overall. Young workers and those in restaurants and retail see the sharpest effects. Small businesses, which employ a huge share of minimum-wage folks, operate on thinner margins than corporate giants. They can’t always pass costs fully to customers or absorb them through efficiency gains.

The result? Fewer openings for the very people the policy aims to help—kids getting their first job, immigrants building experience, folks re-entering the workforce. Instead of a ladder, it becomes a velvet rope. Automation gets a subsidy: why pay twenty-five dollars plus benefits and training when a kiosk or robot doesn’t complain or call in sick?

Prices, Profits, and the Little Guy

Higher labor costs don’t vanish. They show up in prices for burgers, groceries, and services. Small increases have produced modest price bumps—pennies on a menu item—but a tripling is another story. Restaurants, retail, and hospitality, heavy users of low-wage labor, will feel it most. Some will thrive by becoming more productive; others won’t. Independent shops and family operations, the backbone of many communities, face the squeeze hardest.

Turnover might drop for retained workers—higher pay can buy loyalty—but that “success” often masks fewer total opportunities. Reallocation happens: workers shift toward bigger, more capitalized firms that can handle the hit, leaving smaller players and new entrants in the cold. Overall employment in affected sectors doesn’t always crater immediately, but job growth slows, hours get trimmed, and the invisible hand tightens into a fist for the marginal worker.

The Inflationary Merry-Go-Round

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Wages are a cost, and costs feed prices. Broader effects ripple through: higher business expenses, potential slowdown in hiring, and pressure on government budgets if more folks need support because jobs dried up. Past analyses of big hikes suggested net income gains for low-wage families as a group in some scenarios, but with notable losers among the jobless and reduced opportunities. At twenty-five dollars, the trade-offs sharpen, especially in lower-cost regions where market wages don’t justify the floor. A one-size-fits-all mandate ignores vast differences in living costs from coast to coast and heartland to city.

Democrats talk compassion, but economics is pitiless. Forcing employers to overpay for labor distorts the market that matches skills to needs. It helps some stay-at-the-bottom workers who keep their seats, at the expense of those queued up behind them. Experience from states and cities shows mixed bags: wage gains for incumbents, but employment pressures that often bite, especially for the young and less skilled. The directional pressure is clear.

Our Take on the Folly

Government, in its wisdom, loves pretending it can repeal supply and demand. This proposal is classic: ignore the unseen—the jobs not created, the businesses not started, the hours not offered—and trumpet the seen wage bump for whoever survives the cull. It’s like giving teenage boys whiskey and car keys, then wondering why the crash happened. The working stiff doesn’t need Washington setting his price tag; he needs a growing economy where productivity and opportunity lift all boats without mandates that capsize the dinghies.

America First means building an economy where hard work pays because value is created, not because politicians decree it. A twenty-five-dollar minimum wage is less about lifting people up than about feeling good while pulling the rug. The outcome? More frustrated job seekers, higher prices squeezing fixed incomes, accelerated automation, and a smaller pie fought over by fewer employed hands. The road to good intentions is paved with twenty-five-dollar hourly regrets. The real help comes from growth, skills, and letting markets work—not from another layer of command-and-control that treats labor like a fixed commodity.